A few years ago I tried to formalize my thoughts on why some people/teams create good software while others don't. I narrowed the problem down to couple of thin

A few years ago I tried to formalize my thoughts on why some people/teams create good software while others don't. I narrowed the problem down to couple of things. The biggest one was people not considering alternative solutions and getting mentally anchored to the very first idea they have. The second one was lack of meta-awareness (e.g. redefining hard problems to be easier or designing your own tools when existing tools don't fit the job). Couple month ago I bought Lateral Thinking and was somewhat surprised and somewhat encouraged to see that de Bono's observations overlapped my own. Except his book was written in 1970 and didn't deal with IT. Moreover, his analysis was comprehensive and systematic. I wish I learned about his work earlier.